Question 3: Will It Affect Your Solar?

17 Aug Question 3: Will It Affect Your Solar?

Nevadans have a big choice to make in November with Question 3. Should we open up the energy market or should we keep the NV Energy monopoly.

This proposed amendment has a lot of parts and changes proposed that affect our energy overall, but how does it affect rooftop solar?

Firstly, the net metering law that allows solar owners to sell their energy at a percentage of the retail price is a legislative bill, it was not created by NV Energy. This means that these rules would apply for any energy company that comes into Nevada, not just NV Energy.

On top of this, the net metering bill itself anticipated the possibility of an open market. When it was written, language was included to protect itself from being voided or worked around if the energy market eventually opened up.

No on 3 has stated that with the open market being written into the constitution as an amendment it could override any past legislation. This would absolutely be true if the language in the Amendment didn’t expressly protect all past renewable energy legislation, which it does. The full addition is very lengthy, but here is the important part when it comes to rooftop solar:

“Nothing herein shall be construed to invalidate Nevada ‘s public policies on renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental protection or limit the Legislature’s ability to impose such policies on participants in a competitive electricity market.”

So in a nutshell, any steps Nevada has taken to increase it’s renewable energy sources can’t be changed due to the amendment. They’re all here to stay no matter how we vote in November.

We’ll be writing many more posts about Question 3 and all of the pieces it could effect in our state. From how the bill began to the arguments on both sides. But when it comes to your solar installations and net metering, you’re protected 100%.

If you would like to read the literal legislation, you can find links below. Also feel free to comment with any questions you may have about Question 3, we would love to answer them!

Hi Jesse, we just were able to have an interview with Chris Brooks today about this issue and his thoughts on the vote. We will be updating with new information every week, both to update past information and to create new arguments. This is what we had found in our research of the matter beforehand but it looks like there is even more digging that needs to be done that we are currently working on. With our new information from Chris Brooks and the many moving pieces of this bill we will be updating this blog with new info every week as we are figuring it out with everyone else.

Thank you for your comment and we very much appreciate your feedback.

Tom

I specifically asked about this last week at the NV PUC. I was told that the 2017 legislation requires NVEnergy to honor the grandfathered percentage rebate to power turned over to the grid. After Q3, Unless the legislature mandates other companies coming into the market honor those credits, they are not required too. That’s what they said.

Arthur Anderson

We’ll look into that as well as all of the other backers on both sides. We will be dedicating a full blog post as to exactly who if funding/speaking out to support both sides. Thank you for your comment!